The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 12 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Clements: VCs that never lose deal fights aren't competing hard enough
“I think if you're not putting yourself out there in losing, sometimes you're not chasing competitive enough things.”
Clements: VCs get hammered sitting in the middle of consensus
“I think you can actually be successful in this market investing in consensus. And I think you can actually do really well investing in like non-consensus. I think you get hammered sitting in the middle.”
Clements: VC funds must ladder ownership over time to reach 20%
“Today, you have to back into 20% the other way. Like, you do what the market will allow in the earliest possible investment. You sponsor a tender, you do a growth round, you do an IPO round, and you can ladder your way up to 20% ownership. You have to be a mul…”
Clements: Targetting $100B exits at Series A leads to failure
“If you're just constantly stepping to the plate and trying to, you know, I can see at the series A that this is going to be a hundred billion dollar exit, you will just overswing and you will fail.”
Clements: Highly vocal board members are inversely correlated with actual helpfulness
“I think there's generally an inverse correlation between how vocal somebody is and how helpful they actually are. So the person who just has to get the first and last word in and shows up at the board meeting and has to teach you something that you didn't alre…”
Clements: VCs can achieve success in the current market backing consensus deals
“You can actually be successful in this market investing in consensus.”
Clements: Only top 10 private tech companies can avoid IPOs
“With that said, I think that applies to like the 10 best private companies in the world. Like Databricks can do those things. Stripe can do those things. There's a lot of companies that just do need to get public.”
Clements: Rapid growth can obscure underlying structural problems within a business
“Growth can obscure and blind you to a lot of underlying ills in the business.”
Clements: The art of investing lies in knowing when to break rules
“Investing is an art and a science. The science is understanding how to Properly value a company in the yard is understanding when to break the rules.”
Clements: AI coding leads other verticals due to quick and durable value
“The reason that I think coding has become like the vertical in AI is because it shines on both dimensions. Like you can start using cursor in an afternoon and by that evening, like you're 10 times more productive. The time to value is very short. And then the …”
Clements: Startups delay IPOs to avoid $5B market cap murkiness
“I don't think that's actually the reason. I think it's because generally speaking, you want to go public and you want to be able to have like fairly clear line of sight to hitting the five billion dollar threshold and trading beyond that. Cause it's murky belo…”